Best Practices in Globally Attended Professional Development

• Plan with the end goal in mind.
  • Consider carefully the needs of all attendees - speak to the passion of attendees.
  • Consider involving authentic experts - there are now few excuses not to bring in an expert voice.
  • Build a comfortable and easy-to-use environment (similar to )
  • Break the program into simple easy to follow steps as it’s easy to overwhelm attendees if a new concept for them
  • Clearly identify responsibilities of PD providers
• Globally attended PD must be fluid.
  • Flexible during PD sessions
  • For local participants, 2 facilitators may be needed (one to focus on internal and one to focus on external participants)
  • Test all equipment the day prior to the session to help trouble shoot any potential issues
  • Chat moderator
• Natural follow-up should be built into the course.
  • Involve participants in co-creating the follow-up learning experience (tagging and track-backs are important).
• Take time to reflect.
  • What went well, what should be changed?
• Have a central learning hub
  • Have one central location that’s easy to find and use such as a wiki or blog
  • Purpose is to:
    • Document and share what is covered in each sessions so attendees can easily refer back to it
    • Pull the reflections of the attendees into one location to make it easier for them to connect with each other
    • Model the type of practises you want them to learn how to use and be using with their students
• Encourage attendees to continue learning outside of PD sessions
  • Provide incentives or encouragement that makes them want to continue to learn outside of the schedule session times
  • Make it easy for them to easily connect with other attendees online so they learn together as a community

• Skype
• Elluminate: 3-person v-room
• Google Tools
• Wikispaces
• VoiceThread
• Twitter with session hash tags (important to continue the conversation)